“What can I give you that the others can’t?” asked the guy with the funny name.
“Something akin—” I stuttered, trapped in his intense gaze. “Something akin to the first love…I want to know you…without the constraints of keeping you at a distance. I don’t want to put you in a box, to be opened and closed at my convenience. I want to lose control, let go…”
“That’s scary for you, isn’t it?”
I admitted that it was. “It totally conflicts with my principles, my modus operandi, not to mention my reputation.”
“I wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation,” he said. My reputation! Allow me a moment to define, dear readers, what I think you think I am: the urban orgy queen, the sanctimonious slut, the antithesis of Carrie Bradshaw, living a life of blissful freedom or emotional self-deprivation, depending on where you’re coming from. If you read my column regularly, you’ll know that beneath the polyamorous, bisexual bravado is a hopeless romantic. That’s not part of the reputation I fear losing. I lost that long ago. What is reputation but a distorted reflection of truth? Once in a blue moon, someone comes along and wakes up the romantic in me, and the mirror cracks, dashing my progressive theories in a haze of profound passion.
I’m not saying that these portents of love inspire me to give up my libertine ways, get married, move to the suburbs and write a memoir of repentance while raising five kids. No, God no. It’s just that they open me up to the possibility that I could be happy being relatively monogamous with the right person. Even if that seems like a long shot, I feel a glimmer of a dream materializing, that of falling for someone with abandon, fusing our visions of the world, losing myself in love like the first time. Yes, I’ll take that, but a slightly wiser version: losing myself without losing my self.
I can’t recapture the innocence. I could never go back to allowing a relationship to define who I am to the point of personal apocalypse. My experience makes the repetition of that youthful blunder impossible. What I can do is spend several hours with a lover, living with the possibility that he or she could fulfill my dream.
But life always cuts through dreams. The next morning I took off with another lover to attend a film festival in D.C. The guy with the funny name was on my mind while the clown sitting next to me on the bus annoyed me slightly, a result of resentment that had been bubbling ever since we started ten months ago, when he told me he had a don’t ask-don’t tell agreement with his wife. I’d never wanted him to leave his marriage for me. All I wanted was for her to know, so that we might be more aligned. Although he had reached a point of realization that the spark of his marriage would probably not be rekindled, nothing concrete had changed. That and the influence of the guy with the funny name were moving me toward breaking up with him. It seemed inevitable…until we had a talk.
“I’m sick of it,” I told him. “I’m sick of it, too,” he said. I spilled my thoughts: “I want to be with someone with whom I can totally let go…someone I don’t keep at a distance…polyamory is very controlled. Each lover is in a box, to be put in or taken out at my convenience.” It’s funny that I told him the same thing I told the guy with the funny name, and yet my intentions couldn’t be further from each other. Or maybe they’re closer than they seem.
It comes down to a catch-22: monogamy limits the variety of sexual and romantic experience, while polyamory limits how far you can go with one person. I don’t claim to know whether one is better than the other, only that polyamory is generally better for me. My choice to openly have more than one lover at a time is an authentic expression of my free-spirited nature. And yet, I question it just the same. Monogamy may be an impediment to one’s sexuality, but polyamory is a form of emotional insurance. If one relationship doesn’t work out, there are others to fall back on. I’m never, always alone.
The first day of the festival, the clown and I were on different wavelengths. On the last night we were skipping in the streets, laughing at ridiculous things, being silly in the rediscovery of our joy. A few moments before the metro pulled away from the station, I watched him do the mime-in-a-box routine on the platform. I mimed opening a door, then blew him a kiss. Loving outside the box is easy. The challenge is letting go of the key.
Readers can continue to follow Stephanie Sellars’ ‘Lust Life’ online at http://sslustlife.blogspot.com. Next week, the New York Press will launch a new sex and relationships column by Kelly Kreth.
“Something akin—” I stuttered, trapped in his intense gaze. “Something akin to the first love…I want to know you…without the constraints of keeping you at a distance. I don’t want to put you in a box, to be opened and closed at my convenience. I want to lose control, let go…”
“That’s scary for you, isn’t it?”
I admitted that it was. “It totally conflicts with my principles, my modus operandi, not to mention my reputation.”
“I wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation,” he said. My reputation! Allow me a moment to define, dear readers, what I think you think I am: the urban orgy queen, the sanctimonious slut, the antithesis of Carrie Bradshaw, living a life of blissful freedom or emotional self-deprivation, depending on where you’re coming from. If you read my column regularly, you’ll know that beneath the polyamorous, bisexual bravado is a hopeless romantic. That’s not part of the reputation I fear losing. I lost that long ago. What is reputation but a distorted reflection of truth? Once in a blue moon, someone comes along and wakes up the romantic in me, and the mirror cracks, dashing my progressive theories in a haze of profound passion.
I’m not saying that these portents of love inspire me to give up my libertine ways, get married, move to the suburbs and write a memoir of repentance while raising five kids. No, God no. It’s just that they open me up to the possibility that I could be happy being relatively monogamous with the right person. Even if that seems like a long shot, I feel a glimmer of a dream materializing, that of falling for someone with abandon, fusing our visions of the world, losing myself in love like the first time. Yes, I’ll take that, but a slightly wiser version: losing myself without losing my self.
I can’t recapture the innocence. I could never go back to allowing a relationship to define who I am to the point of personal apocalypse. My experience makes the repetition of that youthful blunder impossible. What I can do is spend several hours with a lover, living with the possibility that he or she could fulfill my dream.
But life always cuts through dreams. The next morning I took off with another lover to attend a film festival in D.C. The guy with the funny name was on my mind while the clown sitting next to me on the bus annoyed me slightly, a result of resentment that had been bubbling ever since we started ten months ago, when he told me he had a don’t ask-don’t tell agreement with his wife. I’d never wanted him to leave his marriage for me. All I wanted was for her to know, so that we might be more aligned. Although he had reached a point of realization that the spark of his marriage would probably not be rekindled, nothing concrete had changed. That and the influence of the guy with the funny name were moving me toward breaking up with him. It seemed inevitable…until we had a talk.
“I’m sick of it,” I told him. “I’m sick of it, too,” he said. I spilled my thoughts: “I want to be with someone with whom I can totally let go…someone I don’t keep at a distance…polyamory is very controlled. Each lover is in a box, to be put in or taken out at my convenience.” It’s funny that I told him the same thing I told the guy with the funny name, and yet my intentions couldn’t be further from each other. Or maybe they’re closer than they seem.
It comes down to a catch-22: monogamy limits the variety of sexual and romantic experience, while polyamory limits how far you can go with one person. I don’t claim to know whether one is better than the other, only that polyamory is generally better for me. My choice to openly have more than one lover at a time is an authentic expression of my free-spirited nature. And yet, I question it just the same. Monogamy may be an impediment to one’s sexuality, but polyamory is a form of emotional insurance. If one relationship doesn’t work out, there are others to fall back on. I’m never, always alone.
The first day of the festival, the clown and I were on different wavelengths. On the last night we were skipping in the streets, laughing at ridiculous things, being silly in the rediscovery of our joy. A few moments before the metro pulled away from the station, I watched him do the mime-in-a-box routine on the platform. I mimed opening a door, then blew him a kiss. Loving outside the box is easy. The challenge is letting go of the key.
Readers can continue to follow Stephanie Sellars’ ‘Lust Life’ online at http://sslustlife.blogspot.com. Next week, the New York Press will launch a new sex and relationships column by Kelly Kreth.
